MailBag Friday (#47)

Every Friday, we dedicate this space to sharing solutions for some of the most frequently asked questions posed to our ThinManager Technical Support team. This weekly feature will help educate ThinManager Platform users and provide them with answers to questions they may have about licenses, installation, integration, deployment, upgrades, maintenance, and daily operation. Great technical support is an essential part of the ThinManager Platform, and we are constantly striving to make your environment as productive and efficient as possible.

We are currently using ThinManager 3.1 with an older Advantech thin client that has failed and needs to be replaced. It appears they offer a newer comparable model, and your web site lists it as being ThinManager Ready with the ACP BIOS preloaded. Does that mean that we could replace the failed unit with the upgraded unit with no issue? Would we have to specify anything or do the thin clients listed on your web site as ThinManager Ready automatically come with the ACP BIOS?

You would have to clear the MAC assignment from the Terminal within ThinManager. You should be prompted at the thin client to replace a Terminal or create a new one. ThinManager Version 3.1 is no longer supported by ACP so we cannot say with certainty whether it would work with 3.1.

However, the units that are listed “ThinManager Ready” ship with the ACP BIOS.

-TM

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Are there any keyboard modules that will pop up a keyboard for use when on a touchscreen? It would be great if you added one of these that worked just like an iPad does and is enabled through ThinManager.

We don’t currently have an option to enable on on-screen keyboard in ThinManager since Windows has one built in.

To enable it for a user:

– Log into the desktop with that user’s credentials

– Open the Microsoft Ease of Access Center

– Select ‘Use this computer without a mouse or keyboard’

– Check ‘Use On-Screen Keyboard’

-TM

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We are running ThinManager 6 and Wonderware InTouch. We want to set InTouch as the application to run in the thin client settings, but when we do this we can no longer utilize the windows on screen keyboard (because it is a separate program, it gets suppressed) Is there a way to allow this program to be launched without opening up the whole desktop to the users?

Instead of launching InTouch with AppLink you can launch a batch file that points to both the on-screen keyboard in your InTouch app.

-TM

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I have a project that is using iFix, ThinManager, thin clients set up for PXE boot. I am far enough along in the project that I have the clients being loaded from the ThinManager software. The system is working very well in my test environment and I have been experimenting with different modes of failure.

One mode of failure is when the entire system loses power, It takes my Server up to 5 minutes to boot up. What I am looking for is a way to have my thin client box go into an “infinite loop” requesting a boot until it actually gets booted. This covers me on a power failure as well as a reboot of the server PC.

Is there something other than the PXE boot that will help me accomplish this?

ACP Ready Thin Clients (those with our Firmware) go into an infinite loop like what you are looking for. We have a complete list of ACP Ready Clients on the Supported Hardware Knowledge Base Page: